Ask Yourself Important Questions … And KEEP ASKING THE QUESTIONS THAT MATTER

The important questions are the only ones that matter … it’s YOUR life and you only get one life to ask those questions. Your life is the embodiment of an essential PRAYER to your Creator in which you are begging to be instructed on how to understand your purpose, to understand your Creator’s will for YOU.

Do not settle for thinking that you already know … don’t be one of those arrogant idiots who just thinks that it’s a matter of imitating others.

You don’t want to get to the end of your life and have not asked the questions of your Creator … this is why the FIRST and only really important part of the Lord’s Prayer is to gratefully thank our Creator for every moment of existence and implore that our Creator’s will be done … we don’t want to pray like greedy little kids asking for nicer toys or some other little convenience … that’s fine when people are immature, but mature, responsible humans have to graduate to praying to understand how to best SERVE our Creator or else they are just stuck in a perpetual undeveloped state of needy immaturity.

What is my mission? What is my WHY?

*How should my WHY shape my understanding of the core constituencies that I should serve?

What is it that drives my NEED to do this campaign?

    Do I want to educate or inform people or what am I trying to achieve? Am I attempting to SERVE first?
    
    Is this about championing a cause or an underSERVED community that would not otherwise be SERVED?
    
    Is your podcast or vlog or blog or book a lead generator or an entrepreneurial endeavor for something else?
    
    Do you and your friends have jokes or insights or music or something the world needs to hear/read/see?
    
    Are you the biggest superfan of a sports team with stats and stats ... or maybe you love something about history that is ignored?
    
    Are you willing to pursue your campaign and where yoru content takes enough so that are ready for the difficult interviews or hecklers?
    
    Do you actually feel called to it? What's your WHY of this? What's the agenda in service of that WHY?

Does this REALLY matter?

Do you really NEED to do this or is it somebody else’s mission.

Will you still NEED to do this even on those days when the world does not encourage you?

Are you just imitating some celebrity?

We certainly can learn from celebrity figures … even those who might rub us the wrong way. You don’t need to imitate someone like Trump in his style or rhetoric, you will need that unquenchable ambition or drive … what is the WHY that will sustain you … what about your WHY will push you to trump the unquenchable Trump-level of AMBITION or DRIVE on this?

Is this truly your calling?

Or are you just playing?

Do not waste anybody else’s time if you do not NEED to do this and to do it through the foreseeable future? Until you understand the NEED, do not do something that you don’t NEED to do just to stay busy.

Your campaign, in politics or in starting a company or in developing some sort of venture philanthropy or whatever it is, will need to develop into a more modern, more forward-looking campaign than you can imagine right now.

Part of getting ready for the campaign is acknowledging that you will have keep stepping outside your comfort zone … even though you might not crave the spotlight, you will not only need to become a media icon AND but you will need to build your own media empire … sure, your empire might use already-established partners, sponsors and affiliates – but your campaign will need to control its own message, control its own destiny, set its own tempo … with its own infrastructure …and to accomplish that your future campaign’s media empire will need a WRITTEN plan and working on that written plan starts *TODAY because it’s too late to start yesterday or last week or …

Strategy and business plan

STEP 1: Refine your outreach plan in blogging / a book / a MOOC / a podcast or whatever your media empire concept is

STEP 2: Write down your the content production and promotion and analytics PLAN … that’s what this OUTLINE is … the plan will need more details than this outtline, but at minimum, you will need to have well-defined material outline and plan of the expected frequency of content production and promotion. Your PLAN must evolve as you learn more your audience … at first, YOU are going to be dogfooding your media – in other words, YOU will the only audience you have … but learning about the process and how the recorded material actually sounds/looks up on stage to you back in the audience is part of it.

STEP 3: Choose the best hosting services … try several, but don’t try too many … it’s important to get going with a couple that seem like a good fit … but, at first, get going AND LEARN about the comparability of alternatives for your purposes!

STEP 4: Setup your content landing page on each host … then retweak it tomorrow … and the day after tomorrow … for about a month … then, after a month, you will have a better idea of what you want to do with it … but, first of all, just get going with something raw for today … and fix it in production!

STEP 5: Choose the best equipment to support your content, but KEEP IT EFFING SIMPLE … do NOT get off into the weeds, in gear acquistion mode … just go with cheapest thing that will possibly work … invest in better gear AFTER you have a lengthy bit of experience, ie use what you have; the content revenues should pay for new gear.

STEP 6: Write up your material, rehearse what will be cover, then record the material

STEP 7: Edit/revise/rewrite your material with the applicable software, but don’t be too much of a perfectionist at first … just get the material out there and then refine it later … it’s better to get the material out there and then refine it later than to get bogged down in the details … the time for perfectionism is LATER after you have some experience and maybe one or two followers … at first, get going!

STEP 8: Publish your first episode and promote it … go back to your WRITTEN content production and promotion and analytics PLAN … and keep revising that WRITTEN plan …

STEP 9: Focus on your content publishing / media growth and analytics … update your WRITTEN plan … and invest more in better analytics and more complete data AS you get more experience and more followers … but, at first, BASIC minimal level analytics will be fine … FOR STARTERS,

STEP 10: Plan to make money with your media empire … although you will not at first; at first, there will not be enough income to sustain it … but TREAT IT AS A SERIOUS BUSINESS INVESTMENT that will pay for itself … pay attention to monotonous things like licensing and taxes and all of the super-tedious financial minutia that makes your head hurt … at first, just generate really small dollars, but practice like you intend to play when the game gets bigger … review your game film … go back to your WRITTEN content production and promotion and analytics BUSINESS PLAN … and keep revising that written BUSINESS plan to FOLLOW THE MONEY, to get results … and maybe even inspire imitators OR get the larger media empires to up the level of their lowest-common-denominator schlock they dish up for the masses.

Partners and Sponsors

The blogging platforms out there keep getting better and better … especially in the analytics necessary for the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle of your outreach … which is good, because reaching an audience with a blog might be tougher now than it was a couple decades ago, because of the competition … and the competition will keep getting tougher … because the quasi-almost-okish lowest-common-denominator content which is out there is top notch in terms of it’s production professionalism … it is next to impossible to develop something unique, but more importantly, truly unique content never fits inside established categories, so it’s unlikely to get promoted – it’s more likely that it gets dumbed down or censored or worse that authors self-censor to make it fit the lowest-common-denominator channels.

The war against informing humans is being won by media companies … you will need to understand how those companies work in order to not have your content dumbed down or reduced to simplistic categories … you are going to need great partners and sponsors AND you are going to have keep your awareness of the industry and alternatives sharper than ever as you move forward … the important point is that your strategy and business plan will have to adapt … next month’s plan will be different than this month’s plan, but you will need to have constantly revised / updated WRITTEN plan or forward looking vision to move toward.

In this post, we will talk briefly about the following alternatives that we have looked into so far … but it’s important to realize why this list only scratches the surface of the alternatives that you will need to consider in the next few months and years:

Substack: Substack is a platform that allows writers and creators to create and publish newsletters, blogs, and other content, and monetize it through subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising.
Libsyn: Libsyn is a platform that allows writers and creators to create multimodal content underpinning podcast and to host and publish podcasts, and monetize those podcasts through subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising.
Patreon: Patreon is a platform that allows writers and creators to create and publish newsletters, blogs, and other content, and monetize it through subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising.
Medium: Medium is a platform that allows writers and creators to create and publish newsletters, blogs, and other content, and monetize it through subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising.
Ghost: Ghost is a platform that allows writers and creators to create and publish newsletters, blogs, and other content, and monetize it through subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising.
Mailchimp: Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform that also offers tools for creating and publishing newsletters, blogs, and other content. It allows writers to monetize their content through subscriptions, advertising, and sponsorships.
ConvertKit: ConvertKit is an email marketing platform that specializes in helping writers and creators monetize their content through email newsletters, courses, and other digital products.
Teachable: Teachable is a platform that allows writers and creators to create and sell online courses, e-books, and other digital products.
Podia: Podia is a platform that allows writers and creators to create, sell, and host online courses, e-books, and other digital products.
Ko-fi: Ko-fi is a platform that allows writers and creators to receive tips and donations from their audience in exchange for their content.
Buy Me a Coffee: Buy Me a Coffee is a platform that allows writers and creators to receive tips and donations from their audience in exchange for their content.
Steady: Steady is a platform that allows writers and creators to earn money from their content through recurring subscriptions and one-time donations.
Donorbox: Donorbox is a platform that allows writers and creators to receive recurring donations from their audience in exchange for their content.
Kickstarter: Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that allows writers and creators to fund their projects and earn money from their content.
Indiegogo: Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform that allows writers and creators to fund their projects and earn money from their content.
Drip: Drip is a platform that allows writers and creators to earn money from their content through recurring subscriptions and one-time donations.
Libera: Libera is a platform that allows writers and creators to earn money from their content through recurring subscriptions and one-time donations.
Flattr: Flattr is a platform that allows writers and creators to earn money from their content through recurring subscriptions and one-time donations.
Tipeee: Tipeee is a platform that allows writers and creators to earn money from their content through recurring subscriptions and one-time donations.